Kalispell, Montana - Polson, Montana (2 days) 77 miles

Bill with Flathead Lake in background

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Flathead lake on way to Polson

Yesterday we started out from Kalispell on a beautiful morning, fairly warm already by 7:15 and a tailwind, no less! We biked about 11 miles and were at the north end of Flathead Lake when one of the shift cables on Bill's bike broke. This made it very difficult for him to climb hills, so we turned around and biked the 11 miles back to Kalispell to a bike shop where it took about twenty minutes for them to fix it. After checking our tire pressures and adding a little air, we stopped at a restaurant for lunch and made a reservation at a motel in Lakeside, a small town about four miles beyond the place where we had turned around. So we pedalled 40 miles, but made only about 15 miles of forward progress! However, we did discover that there was a rail trail that started about a mile from the bike shop and went almost to the town of Lakeside. It was a very nice trail and besides taking us off Highway 93 which has a lot of traffic, it also took us around a steep hill we had to climb the first time. The motel we stayed at had a view of Flathead Lake with a short trail down to the lake, and a frontage road that took us to the town and a restaurant and marina, where we ate outside. A beauiful evening. The manager of the motel was a very nice woman whom we sat a talked with for awhile on the deck outside our room, and we learned that she lived in Ft.Morgan, Colorado for awhile in the 70's at the same time that Bill's brother Marty lived there, and she recognized his name because he was her veterinarian!

This morning we rode down the short hill into the town of Lakeside from our motel and stopped for breakfast, and then immediately had to climb two rather long steep hills in succesion. Neither one of us likes to have to do that before we have a chance to warm up our muscles, but we made it. This afternoon we had an even longer climb that went over a ridge between Big Arm and Polson. We thought it would never end, and besides that it was getting hot. The payoff was when we finally got to the top and this incredible vista opened up before us of the samll valley at the southern end of Flathead Lake with it's green hills around it, and the snow capped mountains in the background. At the edge of the lake was the town of Polson, so we had a fast and glorious downhill run into our destination town! We capped that off with a delicious hucklebarry shake at a nice little bakery just before we got to our motel across the road from the lake. We had gotten pretty hot climbing that long hill before the downhill, so that shake really hit the spot.

Just as we were entering a small town called Elmo, a FedEx truck driver who was parked alongside the road asked me if I wanted some food as I passed by. I stopped, a minute later Bill caught up and he offered us both an organic energy bar that he thought was really good and wanted to give us the oppourtunity to try it. Of course, we thought it rather strange that a FedEx driver would stop by the side of the road and offer us energy bars, until he told us that last Friday he had finished the Ride Across America race on an 8-man military team. Each team member rode 200 miles at a time. They came in 2nd, so they did well! He sometimes rides around Flathead Lake in one day - 112 miles. And we're laboring to ride 40-50 miles!
Anyway, we've had a couple days now of beautiful scenery, and weather to match. We've really enjoyed the riding. I'll try to post some pictures.

Mountains in Glacier Park from our campsite in St. Mary

Riding on........


Glacier Park near the east entrance

 Carol & Bill